The continuing thread for those of us following either the 5:2 diet or the alternate-day fasting diet.
The 5:2 diet was featured on Horizon in August 2012, and essentially requires you to fast for 2 non-consecutive days per week. The other 5 days, you can eat what you like, or approximately your TDEE (see explanation below). Alternate-day fasting is just how it sounds; you fast every other day. By "fasting", we mean that we keep our calorie consumption very low, around 500 calories on average for a woman, 600 for a man, on those days.
You'll find on these threads we use a number of acronyms. If you're new to the threads, or Mumsnet in general, they might not make much sense.
WOE/WOL = Way Of Eating/Way Of Life. We use this term instead of "diet" as many of us see this as something to do in the long term.
MFP = My Fitness Pal, a website many use for keeping track of the number of calories they're eating.
TDEE = Total Daily Energy Expenditure, quantifies the number of calories you burn in a day. This measure is best estimated by scaling your Basal Metabolic Rate to your level of activity. TDEE is critical in tailoring your nutrition plan to desired fitness goals. Here is a link to a calculator to help you figure out how many calories you should be eating in a day.
ADF = Alternate-day Fasting, as it says on the tin, fasting every other day rather than 5:2.
NFD = Non fast day
NSV = Non scale victory
Michael Mosley has a website to accompany his new book on the subject. Please go check them out, as he's the whole reason most of us are here!
I know a number of people lurk on this thread, as this is currently quite popular. Please just jump in and post if you're new- you'll find a lot of support here.
Here is a list of links to get you started with this way of eating. Please let us know if you find a new article or some other information online:
All our previous threads can be found by browsing back through the fasting section of the site.
Another thread which breadandwine has started is a good resource for some of the tips and links that get lost in these big threads. In addition to sharing links, we try to condense some of our top tips for fasting there. Keep in mind, we all do this differently, so these are just tips, not rules. This might be a good place to catch up with us if you're feeling a bit lost!
frenchfancy has a recipe thread over here, please post any low-calorie recipes there so they don't get lost in these bigger threads!
If you've been at this a while and are moving on to maintaining your goal weight, there is a thread here to discuss that.
Here is the link to the BBC article regarding Michael Mosley's findings, which was featured on Horizon.
There's a link to the aforementioned Horizon programme here.
A blog post here gives some of the scientific explanation for why this way of eating helps you to not only lose weight, but improve your all-around health.
A Telegraph article which comments on the diet and gives a brief overview by Dr Mosley himself, very informative if you're just starting. (I highly recommend this for an overview)
A study discussed here gives commentary specifically addressing the effect of this diet on obese people (both men and women), with regard to both health and weight loss. ("After 8 weeks of treatment, participants had an average 12.5 lbs reduction in body weight and a 4 cm decrease in waist circumference. Total fat mass declined by about 12 lbs while lean body mass remained relatively constant.) it also mentions "Plasma adiponectin, a protein hormone that is elevated in obesity and associated with heart disease, dropped by 30%. As did LDL cholesterol (25%) and triglycerides (32%).")
Something to consider if you are currently your ideal BMI: this appears to suggest the benefits for women at a lower BMI might not be seeing the same health benefits that are found on men at their ideal BMI.
A BIG THANK YOU to all who have been contributing. Most of us are learning this way of eating as we go along. All of the links above have been posted by others in our previous threads, and they've been very helpful.
A HUGE THANK YOU to Greeneggsandnicht for putting together all this info and resources into one concise OP text, much appreciated by so many 5:2ers!
Come join us, and tell us about your experiences with this diet!
Mumsnet hasn't checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. You may wish to speak to a medical professional before starting any diet.
Fasting / 5:2 diet
The 5:2 Thread Number 23: Summer's really here - time to melt off those extra pounds!
BetsyBell · 08/07/2013 22:49
2nd FD of the week, slight hitch to plans as we ate out but not to far off plan. Managed to get 2 mile walk & 2 mile interval jog - too hot for proper run! Looking forward to my viewing later, reminders in for fat, sick doc & mm. Watched a program on Ramadan on Monday which was really interesting. Now that's fasting to the extreme! It was fascinating about how much food is bought for when the fast is broken - and the amount of loo roll 
Well nicely put together light hearted documentary - not sure if it's on 4od but worth a check to see. Nfd tomorrow, defo changing my cals down to 1700 from 1900 as that's plenty for me.
If you want carbs on a fast day, microwaved or boiled potatoes are the way to go - 86 cals for 100g cooked potato (72 cals uncooked) versus 135 for boiled rice and even more for bread or pasta. 
Hi all! I did my first day today. I worked out my calories based on a quarter of what it would take to sustain my very heavy body! It came out about 650. Would have been bang on if DP used one squirt of spray oil for my stir fry instead of a whole tablespoon of oil (120 cals!!!!)
I had :
Fat free yogurt
Spoon of oat bran
Sweetener
Tin of tuna
Lettuce
Balsamic
Chicken breast
Pack of stir fry
Soy sauce
Bloody oil, grrr
777 cals with milk in my coffee
I think I can do it again which is good!
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Hi all hope you are all enjoying your summer? Great to see so many new fasters and so many old friends on the 23rd thread! I started out on thread 3 but I know some of you have been here since thread 1 
There are different stages of this WOE and were all going thorough our own individual fasting journeys together.
I have learned that sometimes fasting is easy and sometimes its harder (much harder) but if we are doing it for life we need to go with it. I'm getting myself on track after a month off fasting and exercising. I was struggling to get back into routine after 2 holidays, a wedding (not mine) work stress and job applications. i was beating myself up for losing control of my eating again and gaining weight.
I came back to MN after about 3 months away and instantly felt more positive. Wherever you are in your fasting cycle we have all been there too. Stick with it and apply some damage limitation when you can't and you'll get back on track. Recently I been wondering if the weight gain is part of the fasting cycle and contributes to sustainability lol. Or am i just making excuses for my periodic piggery.
Hi Skinnyeye
I think there's no doubt that throughout history, as we developed, we had periods of glut - and periods of famine. We'd feast - and gain weight - in the summer and autumn, then (perforce) fast and lose weight through the winter.
So our weight was never steady - our ancestors must have been the original yo-yo dieters!
Now, as we adopt a 7 day cycle we do the same only on a smaller scale. My weight varies by about 3lbs through the week, for instance.
And I think you can extend that to longer periods, holidays, etc. I recently put on about 5lbs over ten days staying with my son and his family - which I lost very quickly as soon as I got back into a routine.
So, in answer to your question, I think that weight gain is part of the fasting cycle. And I guess it does contribute to sustainability, in that, knowing that any weight gain can be reined in, makes IF easier to stick to.
Hope that makes sense!
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